ARMED FORCES: No Riders

Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson
lowered the boom last week on congressional junketing in Army & Navy
planes. Oklahoma's Senator Elmer Thomas, a veteran finagler, had
planned a two-month "inspection trip" overseas and he had asked Johnson
to provide air transport for himself and eleven other Congressmen. As
chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the armed
services, he might have expected a soft answer, but instead he drew a
crisp refusal: ". . . The services do not have aircraft to spare for
trips of this sort," wrote Johnson. "The cost . . . for such a...